Three new collections have something for everyone

By Joel M. RosenbergStaff Reporter

For the past seven years, MIT's radio station, WMBR, 88.1 FM, has been
the venue for lots of different alternative bands. In the basement of
Walker Memorial, somewhere in Studio A, groups have set up shop and
broadcast their tunes to the community using all 720 watts the station has
to offer. In case you've missed these shows, however, the station has put
together a 2-CD set, Pipeline! Live Boston Rock on WMBR, that has
songs from 40 different bands.

Any time you get that many different sounds together, there are bound to
be some that you like and some that you don't. What's good about this
collection is that it's basically a sampler of young, Boston-based
alternative groups. You listen to it, and if anyone interests you, there's
a good chance you'll catch them around here and maybe make it into their
still early following. With that many bands, you've got to come up with at
least a few you like.

Some of the bands are already doing well for themselves, including
Morphine, who will be playing at H.O.R.D.E. this summer, and the Dirt
Merchants, who have a new album, Scarified (Zero Hour, 1995), and
who just headlined the Middle East last Friday. Granted, the liner notes
themselves indicate that 11 of the bands no longer exist, but that's still
a pretty good track record for seven years of recording. Maybe if this
album came out seven years ago, those bands would have gotten enough
support to stick around. Check it out; it's worth it.

Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks

"As your body grows bigger/ Your mind must flower/It's great to learn/
'cause knowledge is power!" Straight from the seventies, the theme from
Schoolhouse Rock brings back some pretty good memories of waking up early
Saturday morning and parking in front of the TV set for six hours. While
many of us haven't seen a Saturday morning cartoon in years, some of the
songs can be heard again on a great new cover album called Schoolhouse
Rock! Rocks.

I'm not a big fan of seventies retro stuff, but Schoolhouse Rock is
different. It's part of what got a lot of us here - a love of teaching and
learning. The new album has Blind Melon explaining abut how "Three Is a
Magic Number," and Biz Markie singing "The Energy Blues." The album is a
great idea, since lots of people will still get excited when hearing "I'm
Just A Bill," performed by Deluxx Folk Implosion, and Conjunction Junction,
redone by Better than Ezra.

It's fun listening to these songs, because they're written for
elementary school kids. You keep expecting the lyrics to get more
sophisticated and more complex, but some of them just keep repeating the
same idea over and over, trying to teach the stuff to the kids. Maybe it's
not all for kids, though: Some of us could probably benefit from the
grammar songs. They've got all kinds of Schoolhouse Rock stuff now,
including reissues of all of the original episodes on video, a book with
all of the lyrics, and a forthcoming 4-CD box set with all of the original
songs. A portion of the proceeds goes to the Children's Defense Fund, so if
for nothing else, buy the album for a good cause. "It's Schoolhouse Rocky/
A chip off the block/ Of your favorite Schoolhouse/ Schoolhouse Rock!"

Red

Something's Phishy. God Street Wine has been compared to Phish in the
past, and the first song off their new album, Red, would certainly
lend credence to that comparison. They've also been compared to Bob Dylan,
which is what the second song sounds like. The Grateful Dead influence is
apparent in track six, U2 in the fourth, and in concert they play what
sounds just like a Pink Floyd song. They sound a little too much like too
many other people.

While these guys from NYU and Manhattan School of Music do have some
interesting points, like dual guitars which make them a bit more folk
sounding (like the Allman Brothers), as well as a pretty cool rock pianist,
they come up a little short of their own sound - even with two lead
vocalists. Technically they're great musicians, and have a pretty wide
arsenal of styles, which is why they can pull off all of these different
comparisons. But there comes a time when others must start being compared
to God Street Wine.

Their live show at the Paradise last month was kind of interesting. They
didn't interact with the audience at all, and just segued from one song
into the next, often changing genre but hardly exciting the crowd to where
I had expected. They played a few cover tunes, including "A Day in the
Life," as their encore. While a nice touch considering Anthology II had
just come out, it didn't do much to distinguish the group after I already
thought they weren't original enough. Given some more time, they might be
able to merge all of these different influences together to get what
they're looking for. Right now, though, they're a little too Phishy,
Dylinish, Deadish, and so on.